Georgie would have done that, perhaps. She would have let it happen: would have stood there and bled and waited for a rescue that would not come. The bell was barely speaking now, to call them; the fire had flared up, but what were the odds that anyone else would see it? See it and come, two things, one unlikely and one effortful?
Tom said someone usually came out, in the middle of the night, to sit with Frank . . .
It was true, he had said that. But someone had been already, and done more than sit; and perhaps that had been Tom by torchlight, making his way back, leaving Frank hanging?
He’s a magician. Candles go out at a word from him. He wouldn’t need a torch.
Perhaps not – but perhaps he’d have to carry a candle. He might not be able to make a flame dance from nothing. And if he had to carry a candle, why not carry a torch?
And he was a magician. He could have put Frank up there, had the rope strangle him and dangle him at a word.
If there was a word for that. If the language allowed it.
Yes. If. Neither Grace nor Georgie knew. She didn’t know if she were making excuses for Tom or accusing him, or both.
What she did know – what Grace knew, beyond question – was that she wasn’t just going to stand here and bleed until she fell over, until she passed out. Wait and hope for rescue. No.
So, then. She had done what she could, to still Frank’s swinging and the appalling grinding of that bell. Now she set her teeth, clutched her bleeding wrist against her chest because it couldn’t hold itself there any longer, and set off walking.
Without a free hand to fend off stray branches and groping thorns, she couldn’t save her face, let alone her hair. With leaves dense above and the light soon lost behind her, she couldn’t see the danger before she’d walked straight into it, again and again and again.
Bleeding, then, from a dozen scratches or worse – and from two fresh cuts that were far, far worse – she tripped and stumbled and swore her way down one path and up another, and so came after all to Cookie’s cottage.
And was not at all surprised to find his lights still on; and hammered on his door with her fist, because she couldn’t stop now to find the knocker, everything was suddenly urgent; and her one hand was clumsy while the other one was dead, except she didn’t think the dead should hurt so badly. She hoped not. And she thought she should probably not have come here, because she was fairly sure her baby was following her, but it was too late now; the door was opening, and oh!
That wasn’t Cookie; that was the doctor’s wife. Ruth. And there was the doctor behind her in the little sitting-room, smoking a cigar, looking on with interest; and she didn’t know where Cookie was, but here was she, falling over the threshold, going down—
—and coming up on Cookie’s settee, with the air full of smoke – that cigar, and Cookie’s rollies, and Ruth too was having a cigarette – and that set her coughing, which reminded her.
She told them about Frank, not coughing now, in his blazing charcoal smoke. She thought she got it all out, all the important stuff, and then she was gone again.
She came back again in a room she hadn’t seen before, low beams and an angled ceiling, far too cramped for D’Espérance. She must still be in Cookie’s cottage: a little bedroom up in the eaves. A lamp burned in one corner, shaded by a silk scarf so that it cast a dim reddish light. For a while she just lay there, looking. She was conscious of another presence in the room, though: the sounds of movement, soft and subtle and controlled. Someone else’s breathing, that too. She supposed that was movement too, the movement of air and muscles. It was oddly reassuring, that whoever watched this night with her did at least need to breathe.
No woman should be glad, not to find her child with her; but still. Here she was. Still breathing.
Not bleeding, not now. Her one hand checked the other, below the covers: freshly bandaged, and quite dry.
Also, no smell of smoke. None on her, none in the air. She’d been washed when she was undressed, before she was put to bed. Washed unconscious like a child, like a patient. Now she was being sat over in her sleep and in her waking, like a child, like a patient.
She turned her head, and was utterly unsurprised to find a nurse there. Ruth was sitting on a straight hard chair beside the bed, working with a crochet hook and a skein of wool.
Without lifting her eyes from her fingers, Ruth said, ‘Well, I know that’s nothing I did. I didn’t even bring my knitting up, because the click of the needles might have disturbed you. How are you feeling?’
She thought about it for a moment. ‘Fine,’ she said, a little surprised to find that true. Then: ‘Tired,’ because she was that too. Then she remembered Frank and had to think about him, and how she felt about that; and then of course she had to ask, ‘Is Frank . . .?’
The question seemed to die half-spoken, but it carried weight enough to get where she’d meant it to go.
‘Frank’s being taken care of,’ Ruth said carefully. Covering the ground. ‘The menfolk are out there now, with the authorities, handling everything. It’s not exactly the first mysterious happening at D’Espérance. And the local police inspector is . . . well, very local. He’s lived around here all his life. He knows about the house, and he won’t make difficulties. Edward can certify it as a suicide, and people will accept that. Of course they will; what else? It’s fairly obvious that the balance of the man’s mind was disturbed. There’ll need to be an inquest, but the coroner’s onside too. It’ll mean a day or two of disruption here and some formalities – you’ll have to be interviewed, I’m afraid, though one of us will sit in with you and make sure to keep things easy – but I don’t think there’ll be too much trouble, so long as we can keep it out of the nationals. A little local suicide, they shouldn’t be interested, but you never can tell what the Sundays might pick up . . .’
‘Don’t worry about the papers,’ she said. ‘I’ll make sure they leave this alone.’
A little beat of silence, of disbelief: and then perhaps Ruth remembered who she was, or one of the people she was, and said, ‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘I . . . would have thought that your name would attract them, rather than the opposite.’
‘I can play decoy if I have to, if that will help. But – no, I shouldn’t have to do that. Only a phone call.’ Tony would be upset, to have this news come so hard on the heels of her earlier report: I’ve found him. But Tony wanted what was best for the Messenger, and for himself. It was never good when the newspaper became the story; the last thing he’d want would be for this story to break nationally. He’d have to come up here himself then, to answer the coroner’s questions in open court: why he’d sent a reporter to the commune under cover, exactly when and how he’d lost touch with his man, exactly how and why he’d chosen to send a notorious and unstable woman after him to find out what had happened . . .
No. That was not a story Tony would want to tell, nor to see told. Neither would his father. Between the two of them, they had influence enough to deter any other paper that came sniffing around. Tony was everybody’s friend, and if friendship wasn’t enough then his father’s money would carry the day, or else his political contacts. That was how the world worked, for people like that. She knew; she’d seen it from underneath as they came crushing down on top of her. Nobody could stand up, under that.
‘Well. We’d be very grateful. But you may not need to use the telephone, if face-to-face would be better.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Ruth didn’t understand. The idea was to keep Tony from coming. Or thinking that he needed to come, or sending anyone else.
‘We’ve a private ambulance arriving in the morning, to take Kathie down to London. My husband thinks that it ought to take you too, and I have to say I agree with him. You’ve lost a lot of blood, dear, never mind the shocks of the night. A few days in the clinic will put you on your feet again.’
It was the perfect escape for everyone. Any nosy journo wanting to know where she’d been would never think to look up here if he found her still in London, taking bed rest in some fancy private nursing-home. He’d think terrible things, and likely print them too, and she’d have all of that to live through; but it would all be lies, and lies were easy. You just denied them and denied them, and let people believe what they liked, what they were comfortable with. They’d all think she had a drink problem or another baby to get rid of: one or the other, or both. No one would bother to look any further; why should they? It was the best kind of lying, where you got someone else to tell the lies and they were all true anyway, even if not actually now . . .
‘Oh, hush,’ Ruth said gently. ‘What are you crying for, you silly girl? Don’t you worry, we’ll take care of you. I could wish I’d had the care of you before this, but—’
Somehow, effortfully, she managed to shake her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and that was true too, ‘but I can’t come to London with you. I still have things to settle here.’
‘The coroner will wait, dear. The policeman too, if he doesn’t get to you this morning.’
‘Not them. Things of my own.’ Frank didn’t change anything. Or no, that was nonsense; of course he did. But he didn’t change everything. Not yet.
Not that she was getting out of bed in chase of things, not yet. She slept, and when she woke Cookie brought her food; and then again, the sleeping and the waking and the meal. Tea and toast the first time, with a coddled egg, nursery food; and then soup again, a different kind of soup, thick and nourishing. Invalid food.
She looked at him through the steam of the bowl, and frowned, and said, ‘Why do they call you Cookie?’
He smiled and gestured at her tray. The bread was his own bake, clearly, and she rather thought he might have made the butter too.
‘That’s what I thought. Your name’s not Mr Cook at all, is it?’
‘That’s right.’
And then he was gone, leaving her with more questions than answers, and more irritation than either. Wasn’t the big house enigmatic enough already, without those who lived in its shadow playing their own games with mystery and shadow?
Apparently not. No matter.
In the afternoon, she had a visitor. Voices down below; light feet on the stairs; a hesitant knock on the door. That uncertain tapping would have been enough to give him away, if she wouldn’t have known him just by his tread after following him about ever since she came here, if she hadn’t heard his voice quite clearly wafting up the stairwell.
It was hard to reconcile the self-doubting boy on the landing here with the confident young magician who could kill a blaze of candles with a single word, but there it was. Here he was.
She would rather have avoided him, but this did have to happen; and it was probably better here, now, where he was unsure of his ground. So she told him to come in, and he did that; and fidgeted awkwardly at the foot of the bed, waiting for her to tell him to for Pete’s sake sit down in the chair there, where Ruth had been before.
Instead, she patted the edge of the bed, where he’d be just a couple of inches and a couple of blankets from her barely-decent bed-warm flesh. He could hardly help but be aware of that, aware of every shift her body made between the old worn cotton sheets. Right now she just wanted to keep him off-balance.
He perched obediently where her hand had indicated. Lying through her teeth, she said, ‘It’s lovely to see you, Tom. Thanks for coming.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘of course . . .’ And ran dry, and stopped; and shrugged, and rallied, and tried again. ‘I feel, you know, responsible. I was the one who found you in the wood and brought you on. I introduced you to the house. And you’ve had such a rotten time since you came, though you were a hero for trying to save Kathie; and then last night, and – well, some people are saying you’re a Jonah, that you bring trouble, but of course I don’t believe that, and . . .’
And somebody has to come and see you, he seemed to be saying, so it had better be me. There really isn’t anybody else. She was sure that wasn’t actually what he meant to say, though it might still be the truth. She just smiled thinly and said, ‘Well. I’m sorry if people think I’m bad luck. I don’t think I believe in luck.’ Only what’s deserved. And never getting that, never being that lucky. ‘Things happen, things have happened, but it’s really not my fault. You’re not saying that people really think it is?’
‘Oh, no, not really. No, I’m sure not,’ he said, sounding anything but sure. Yes, they do. ‘Only, well, everything’s been so . . . so dramatic since you came, and now Frank’s dead and we’ve got police all over, and some of the people here don’t mix well with the pigs; and they do just want someone to blame, and I’m afraid that’s you.’ Because you’re still a stranger, he was saying, not one of us.
She could have given him a better reason. Because I’m responsible, she could have said. In part she was, no question; and she could take it all. Why not?
Because he knew the truth, of course; he knew how much he was responsible for himself. Of course he’d let the house blame her, but . . .
‘Tom? Are you seriously saying that nothing strange had happened here before I came?’ Didn’t you have to practise?
‘Oh – no, I’m not saying that. Of course not. Some people think the house is haunted; some think it’s blessed. The captain says it’s a reservoir of power. When I came here, I thought I was following ley lines to a nexus. Webb says it’s not the house, it’s the people. He says wherever you get a concentration of people who believe, even if they believe in different things, you’re going to get a sense of something happening – but I . . . I . . . I don’t think he’s right. I think places store things up, like batteries; I think they take energy in and release it. Maybe it comes from us, I don’t know. Maybe it’s inherent in the earth, that’s what I used to think, but . . .’
But he was being heretical, taking a stand against his guru, and it was really difficult for him; and he really, really didn’t sound like a magician today, or like he’d ever made anything happen on his own account.
She could be kind. Georgie could, always. She said, ‘But either way, any way it comes, there was stuff going on before I turned up, right?’
‘Little things,’ he said. ‘Feelings, mostly. Some people thought they saw a ghost or a wood spirit or a manifestation of the Goddess. And then there was Frank, of course. Frank . . . well, we don’t like to say he was mad. He just saw the world differently, and it was a struggle always to keep him settled. He couldn’t stand being in the house, basically. From the day he came, things happened around him. He said it was a poltergeist, but I know Mother Mary thought he was doing it all himself. Whether or not he remembered doing it, after. Either he was pretending really hard, or else he had, you know, a split personality, or else . . .’
‘Or else it was real. To him, at least. And people who are pretending don’t hang themselves, mostly.’
‘No. No, they don’t. Which is why, well, don’t tell anyone – but I just think he was mad. I have to think that. It’s either that or . . . or something supernatural. Something malevolent. In the house, or in the woods. Which I’m not going to believe, but a lot of people do, that’s what I’m saying. They think you’re like Frank, a catalyst. A lightning rod. Something that brings out the bad stuff.’
And the thought distressed him deeply, or else he was a very good actor; and she didn’t believe that for a moment. She knew a thing or two about playing a part. She’d played herself half her life, and now she was Georgie too; and even Grace at her most cynical couldn’t see Tom faking it this well.
And yet . . .
She said, ‘Let’s change the subject. Please,’ as though she couldn’t bear to talk about this any longer; and then, when he nodded an immediate acquiescence, she went straight on: ‘Tell me about last night. I know I was distracted, and I’m sorry; but I didn’t realize until afterwards that there was something you wanted to tell me, something you were really pleased about. Tell me about that.’
‘Oh,’ he said awkwardly, shrugging, ‘that was nothing. Nothing now.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s not nothing. Then or now. Never mind what’s happened since – tell me what you did last night. I really want to know.’
‘It’s just – it was like a door opening, and all this light spilling out . . . Which is kind of apt, in a way, because of what happened. What I did. Except it’s not me, not really. It’s the language. There’s real power in it, just like Webb’s been saying. It doesn’t just describe the world, it can shape the world. Remake it.’
‘I’m sorry, Tom, I’m not smart like you. I didn’t do well at school. You’re going to have to explain that. What did you actually do?’
‘I said a word,’ he said, quietly proud, ‘the word for extinguish, and all the lights in the room went out.’
I know. I was there. But he thought it wasn’t him, and so did she, now. He thought it was the word that counted; she wasn’t so sure. ‘Who else was there?’ Apart from me. I wasn’t the lightning rod for this.
She thought he would just say Webb, and then everything would be clear and easy.
He didn’t.
Getting out of bed was a hard thing. Not the hardest, not yet; but hard enough, for now.
Just the physical act of it, getting up and washing, finding clothes: hard effort and tricky doings, she had no strength and no control. It was like working someone else’s fingers, from a distance.
Stumbling her way downstairs, when balance was like something her body had forgotten: she had to lean into the wall all the way. And then stand straight and tell lies, say that she felt good, thanks, perfectly fit, and fine to be leaving now. Just going up to the house, yes. To see a man about a horse, yes. No, she didn’t mean that literally; she wasn’t delirious, no. She wasn’t being deliberately evasive, either; she just wanted to talk to somebody, and no, it really wasn’t any of Cookie’s business, and . . .
Oh, all right, then. She was being deliberately evasive, yes.
Even so. He didn’t have any right to stop her, even patients could discharge themselves from hospital, and . . .
Oh. More soup, before she went? Well, if he insisted, then. Yes.
The doctor and Ruth weren’t there, which might be the only reason she got away with it. She couldn’t have stood up to all three of them. She could hardly stand up at all, to be honest. Sitting down was better. More soup: that was better too. For somebody who mostly couldn’t be bothered to eat, she did seem to be wonderfully hungry.
And she didn’t honestly have to stand up to Cookie much, once she’d let him bully her into this respite. Indeed, she almost thought he was colluding. He satisfied himself that she was fuelled and primed, and then he released her.
Better: he drove her up to the house. She had never expected him to do that. Whoever he was and whatever position he held here – she still didn’t know his actual name, had no label for him beyond ‘Cookie’, which he really wasn’t, any more than she thought he was a janitor – she’d come to think of him as a neutral observer, holding himself apart. Even this much engagement was a surprise. Though she supposed he just wanted to see what she meant to do, the results of it at least, and he must have doubted she’d even make it as far as the house without his help.
Either that, or he didn’t want to confess to Dr Dorian – or to Ruth – that he’d let their patient walk through the woods all that way. These potent woods, when she was short of blood already, and still open at the wrist.
Anyway: he drove her to the back door but didn’t try to come in, didn’t apparently want to fuss over her once he was sure that she’d been delivered. Didn’t want to snoop.
Which was just as well, because what she did – whatever she did – she didn’t mean to be snooped upon.
The sun was setting, but it was not yet dinner time for the house. The captain’s belly hadn’t proclaimed it, or else there was no one to announce it, they hadn’t yet thought to arrange a substitute for Frank. People were milling in the corridors like school kids, perching on window sills and squatting in circles on the floor, smoking like bad kids, waiting for the summons.
She thought somebody ought to be taking control. She was quite surprised that Webb wasn’t: the first mate taking charge, keeping the great ship on time and on course. Deferring naturally to the captain, but still making sure the crew got fed . . . Wasn’t that his job?
Keeping the gangways clear, that too. He wasn’t doing that either. She was prepared to elbow and kick her way through if she had to, no more sweet shy Georgie now; but actually they moved out of her way, mostly, when they saw her coming. They all knew who she was, or at least who she was here, who she was now: the girl who saved Kathie and then didn’t; the girl who found Frank and couldn’t save him either; the Jonah. None of these knew her well enough to talk to, these random hippies; and those who might have stopped her anyway, out of duty or curiosity or sentiment – well, perhaps they saw something in her face.
Perhaps they saw something at her back, and catching up.
They were all of them conditioned, apparently, like Pavlov’s dogs; the high doors to the dining room stood open and people had gathered in the hallway outside, but no one had gone in yet.
She went in.
She walked all the way through, around the long low tables to the matching doors at the far end.
And opened one of those, and walked on through; and would have closed it again behind her anyway, and never mind whatever might be following, only she felt it snatched out of her hand by something materially stronger than she was, slammed shut with a force that said there’d be no opening it now, not from either side. Not till this was done with.
Candles were all around. Maybe it was only the draught raised by the slam of the door, but for a moment they all seemed to reach toward her, yearningly. Fingers shaped themselves in the flames.
Joss sticks burned in the fireplace and at the window, all along the windows. Again, their smoke twisted and eddied in the shifting air, formed hands and fingers, groped for her from far away. Georgie thought of Frank and charcoal smoke, and shuddered.
Mother Mary sat alone on her sofa, and smiled to see poor Georgie scared.
Grace met her eye to eye, untroubled. ‘What, no captain? What have you done with him?’
‘The captain’s doing grandly,’ she said, soft and dangerous, eternally protective. ‘He’s off being official with the policemen, and dear Frank. Webb’s away too, down to London with his precious Kathie. They can look after themselves tonight, while I . . . look after you.’
‘Everyone knows I’m here.’ That came out too quickly; it sounded defensive where she’d meant to sound only calm and ordered, as well prepared as Mary.
‘People in the house know that Georgie Hale’s in here with me – but who’s Georgie Hale? Does anybody know? If she vanishes, can anybody find her, or any trace of her? Maybe she just left by another door, gone as mysteriously as she came. Maybe that’s a confession.’
‘People in London know who she is. Who I am.’ One person did, at any rate. And he’d come looking. She thought he would. He’d come for the story. Sorry, Tony. You’re too late. Too late for Frank, he’d be too late for her too. If he came.
If he didn’t, there’d be no one to tell her story. Except Mother Mary, who everybody listened to.
‘Oh, I know who you are,’ she said dangerously. ‘I’ve always known. Everyone here has their head in the clouds, those who haven’t smoked their brains entirely; they struggle to know nothing, and they frequently achieve it. I keep my eye on the world, as I do on everyone here. I knew Georgie Hale, even before she lied to me about her name.’
‘Well, then. You know that people will come looking for me.’ For almost the first time in her life she really wanted a cigarette, and of course she didn’t have one. Grace used to carry them routinely, but only for the benefit of men. Georgie never would.
Besides, she really didn’t fancy bringing flame and smoke quite that close to her throat. Not with Mary’s eyes darkly on her, broodingly. She wondered if it were possible to be strangled from the inside.
‘Of course, but again: if they find nothing, nobody, no body – then who’s to say what happened? Grace Harley’s tried to kill herself before. Say she went mad and hanged poor Frank, then came to me to confess; and I tried to keep her for the police, but she wouldn’t stay and I couldn’t hold her, she went running off into the woods and over the moor and she might be anywhere by morning. Her body might never be found. For certain sure it would never be laid at my door.’
There wasn’t another chair, and she wasn’t, was not going to squash up on the sofa next to Mother Mary, but she really needed to sit down now. So she did that, sliding her back down the wall, hoping that it looked cool and self-confident and not at all as though her legs were giving way beneath her.
Here was one mystery solved: the ship’s bell that used to stand by the back door had been removed here, for the moment. Set right here on the floor like she was, out of the way but in the captain’s eyeline when he was sitting in his place.
She said, ‘You really think you can do that? Just make me vanish altogether, in a puff of smoke and nothing left behind? You can’t afford another body.’
‘Oh, not me, dear. I can’t do anything of the sort. Of course not. I’m no magician. I don’t even speak their precious magic language. The gods, though – oh, yes. I reckon the gods could take you away from me, little nuisance that you are. Or burn you right up where you sit and leave nothing but a smear of grease and the smell of overcooking. I’ll ask them in a little while. Then we’ll see.’
Was that how she justified it? Not her work, but the gods’? ‘That must make things easy,’ she said, smiling, relaxed. Nothing to it: this was the face she wore night after night, man after man. ‘You just put it to them, and they decide. No kickback, no responsibility.’
‘That’s right. They take all the responsibility to themselves. They can do that; they’re gods.’
It wasn’t right, of course. It wasn’t even sane. She really wasn’t one to talk, but she knew sheer bloody madness when she heard it: out of her own mouth or someone else’s, no difference.
Besides, it wasn’t how this house worked. Mother Mary might believe it, she might choose to believe it, but she was fooling herself. It wasn’t gods that stalked these high rooms, working strange miracles.
Grace knew. So did other people: Cookie, the doctor, Ruth. And at least Cookie knew where she was, and that she wasn’t about to go running off into the wilds of the land in chase of some wild abstracted death. He was a sensible man; he’d want a more sensible story.
She tried to find comfort in that, that someone at least would want to dig deeper in search of her.
Tried hard.
Meantime, maybe she was only buying time but that seemed fair enough, a reasonable thing to do; she said, ‘What’s it all about, though, Mary? Frank, Kathie . . .’ Me . . . ‘What’s it for?’ And why should the gods oblige you?
‘This is Leonard’s great task,’ Mary said, with just a hint of that breathless awe that said he is my guru, even while her smile said that she worked behind her guru’s back, moved him around like a chess piece: as we do, my dear, with our men; you’ll know, you of all people, how could you not? ‘It’s what he’s meant to do, his work in the world. Of course the gods want to see him fulfil his purpose. It’s what they want for us all.’
And he’s happy, is he, for you to pave his way with corpses? Aloud, she only said, ‘And, what, Frank stood in his way, did he?’
‘Yes, of course. Frank was a spy; he worked for one of those Fleet Street rags that you make such an exhibit of yourself for. I expect you knew him, did you? So he changed his clothes and came up here and made like he was one of us, but I never believed him. He was never right. I looked through his things and found the proof. Notebooks, a camera. Spy stuff. I didn’t mean that he should die, I only wanted rid of him, but the gods knew better. They tried to accommodate me at first, they tried just to scare him away; but he wouldn’t go. He only moved out of the house and bedded down in the woods, and watched us all, and waited.’
And went mad, but it was no use saying that to someone squatting that same territory. She hadn’t quite known till this that a person could be calm and competent and entirely crazy.
‘What do you think he was waiting for?’
‘For you. Obviously.’
She might be mad, but she was almost right, that too. Of course Tony would send someone else, when Frank disappeared; it meant only that the story was getting bigger. Somewhere in the giddy maze of his head, Frank must have known that. He really might have been waiting.
Which made his death her fault, probably. One more blow to her conscience, one more stiffening in her spine. She was going to need it.
She said, ‘And Kathie?’ Never mind me, I know about me. So do you. The assault on Kathie bewildered her.
‘She wanted to take Webb away from us. Nice little rich girl, Kathie – her dad owns half of Buckinghamshire. She was working to set him up down there: in his own institute was what she called it, with all the communications that are difficult here, and none of the distractions that our colony affords. She would have . . . diminished what Leonard is working for. I couldn’t have that. People should come to us, not move away. I prayed for intervention. That’s all.’
No, that wasn’t all. She deluded herself, she took refuge behind her gods, but somewhere inside her she must know what she was doing. She’d gone out to Frank – using her torch, which perhaps nobody else in the house would have done; there were hurricane lamps for going outside in the dark, but Mary had never quite bought into the simple life – and no doubt she’d say that she’d gone only to witness, and perhaps she even managed to believe it, but that had to be fragile, crêpe-paper thin.
Grace wanted to tear through that, just to see what lay deeper down. She wasn’t sure it would help, but it might make her feel better. Georgie thought that might be important.
Poking gently, she said, ‘But now you’ve lost Webb anyway. You said he’d gone with Kathie . . .’
‘Yes, but he’ll be back. We still have all his work, his records here. And his faithful lieutenant. Tom can take over, if we have to do without Webb. I’m making sure of that.’
A little demonstration, the power of the rational language: yes, Tom had bought totally into that. Never doubting that it was his own achievement, never thinking that the woman who stood behind his shoulder might have been playing with him. Praying to her gods, no doubt, to kill the candle flames at the moment that Tom spoke his potent word. Deceiving him, and deceiving herself, that too.
She said, ‘Why do your gods play with fire?’ Trying to sound a little naive, a little curious, nothing more. A girl at the end of her tether, who only wants to know. ‘It’s all been fire and smoke,’ and nothing to do with gods. Even the hands of wax had been flame at one remove, in either direction: molten by fire, candles without wicks.
Mary hadn’t been there, but that didn’t seem to matter. The house took what it wanted, used that as it chose. For her, from her, it took the cold sucking absence of her baby; for Mary and from Mary, hands made of flame. And you went to Frank and made that happen, Mary, didn’t you? Broke his charcoal heap deliberately to let the fire roar, and then I think you stayed to watch your gods at work.
‘That’s how we communicate,’ Mary said, ‘between the world below and the world above. Fire and smoke are the tools we use, the gods and we. The gods and me, at least. Though I’m not alone. Other believers have other ways to talk to heaven and to hear, I am sure; but fire has always been a tradition. From burnt offerings to altar candles. And smoke, incense, that too. From Catholic thurifers to Chinese joss. I use candles and joss in my own worship, of course, to catch the attention of the gods and speed my prayers on high. Sometimes they choose to use the same means, to bless me with an answer.
‘I’ve always felt a special connection to fire,’ she went on musingly. ‘From a child, I knew there was importance in the flame. More significance than simply warmth and light. The people here let the distinctions blur, and I’m sorry about that. Even the captain doesn’t see what seems so obvious to me. Even though he’s spent so much time in the east, far more than I have . . .
‘That’s where the scales finally fell from my eyes, you see. That’s where I saw what fire really means. The captain sent me to India, where people live closer to nature and closer to their gods, both at once; where fire is still a clear messenger, as it used to be for us. More than a messenger, indeed: where people use it to convey their very souls to the next life. I saw a young woman, newly widowed, dressed in her wedding clothes and seated on her husband’s funeral pyre. I saw the fire lit; I saw her burn beside him. She never stirred to flee the flames, she never raised her voice. Only her hands – I saw her lift her hands to heaven as she burned. That, yes. That has stayed with me all these years.’
She was sure that it had. Hands, clutching out of flame: how not? Never ask if the girl had been tied to her chair, perhaps, or drugged. Or both. Mary had the image that she wanted, with the meaning that she chose. In this place, that was enough. More than enough. Fire and smoke, and hands to do her work for her, oh yes . . .
Mary didn’t need her own hands, apparently, not any more. She spoke a word, and all the candle flames stiffened in response. ‘Blessed be the gods,’ she said quietly, her gaze calm and settled. ‘Now, I have prayers to say, but I can do that quietly in my head and still listen to you. I’ve told you my story. Why don’t you tell me yours? Oh, I know who you are, Grace Harley, and I know what the public knows, what the papers say about you. The party girl who put the Tory party in bed with the Communist party, or might have done. Found guilty of taking money for sex, from the men who were acquitted of paying it. That’s always the way. But I think there’s more to you than that, isn’t there? You’ve made some devil’s pact with the yellow press, I know that too – that you’re here like Frank was, to spy for them – but it’s more than that too. You may as well tell me, you know. No secrets now. It’s just you and me and the gods in here. Nobody will be coming through that door until we’re done.’
A sudden fierce light stood to confirm that. She had set candles in jars on either side of the double doors – but that was no candlelight that leapt out of them. They were pillars of light, rather, cold and tall, as broad around as her arm, thrusting up full-width from the mouths of their jars and then criss-crossing like laces, back and forth across the space between them. She couldn’t imagine what would happen to anyone who forced the doors open and tried to come through. Perhaps the light would hold the doors closed, against any human strength; or else nobody would dream of disturbing Mary while they remained shut. One or the other, she supposed. Or both.
Well, then. No reason not to share her secrets. She never had, with anyone – but one way or the other, it wasn’t going to matter here. Whoever eventually walked out of that door, they were going to do it alone.
She said, ‘I was pregnant, when they sent me to jail before the trial.’
‘Yes, dear, I know that. The whole world knows. Pregnant and unmarried and couldn’t even name the father, there had been so many candidates.’
Couldn’t, or wouldn’t. But she didn’t interrupt; Mary had a head of steam and was forging onward.
‘What better proof could you offer that you were guilty of everything they said? No wonder they locked you away. But then you lost the baby, and the judge took pity on you.’ I wouldn’t have done, her manner said. Never mind what’s happened since, or whatever’s happened here. Hippy morals, never mind those either. Guilty as charged, and you met your just deserts.
No. Never that. No punishment enough: not even this raw confession, made in raw light to a woman who was mad, and who despised her.
She said, ‘I didn’t lose my baby. I killed him.’
She said, ‘While he was inside me still, while I was inside. They were going to make abortion legal, but I couldn’t, you know. I couldn’t wait. He wouldn’t hold still and not grow and just wait until the law let me get rid of him.’
She said, ‘It would’ve been easier on the outside; I could’ve managed it better. I knew people, outside. Of course I did. But that didn’t help me in Holloway. So I asked the women there, and one of them got me something. I don’t know what – a powder, green and bitter it was. I mixed it with water and swallowed it, and she said it’d make me miscarry. It . . . didn’t do that.’
There were tears leaking down her face now, but she ignored them and so did Mary. ‘I was ill for a few days, I bled a little, but that was all. Only, then I didn’t get any bigger, and it didn’t move any more, it didn’t kick; and the doctors said it was dead, my baby, but I still had to carry it until. Until . . .’
That was it, apparently. A word that grounded on a memory too dreadful to discuss, a door she wouldn’t open, a place she refused to go: the day she’d given birth, if that was what it was, to the son that she’d killed weeks before.
No punishment enough. Certainly nothing that Mary could do to her now, maybe not even anything the house had to offer. She had a terrible respect for the house, its own judgement, its insight; more than she’d ever had for the systems of law, the man who had sat in judgement over her. She’d seen too many judges with their trousers off.
Mary was something else again. Not constrained. Not sane, perhaps, but powerful even if she wouldn’t admit it. And lethal, of course, that too.
Even now she might claim that she was praying, but what she was really doing, she was setting up to kill.
Where Grace sat – and she was all Grace now, all full of that self and what she had done, full and spilling over – there were candles on either side of her, and their lights were rising: nothing like regular candle-flames, and nothing either like the interlaced pillar-lights that kept the door. These rose like string and stretched like wire, bright golden fierce wires that bent back on themselves and twisted around, scribbled lines in mid-air that burned and burned and would not go out.
Lines that made shapes, yes.
Lines that etched two hands in light, right there in the air, between her and Mary: two hands of flame, each drawn from a thread of candlelight, too big and too bright and too potent, far too near.
Hands that twitched and stretched, that folded their fingers close and stretched them wide, that learned their reach and strength – and then reached out for her throat.
Georgie might just have sat there and let them take it. Take her. Crush or burn or both, she had no idea.
Grace, though? Grace was a survivor.
Full of guilt, overflowing with confession: even so.
Grace ducked and dived. Ducked under the fiery hands as they groped for her; dived sideways, past the candle in its jar, to where the ship’s bell stood in its frame there on the floor, bulky and awkward and out of the way.
Snatched at it with her right hand, her good hand; gripped the rope and swung the clapper, struck the bell.
Struck it again and again, clattered it back and forth, sound and fury.
Felt her other wrist rip itself open against whatever stitches had been set there; felt the blood pulse out one more time.
And she had so little to start with, hardly enough; and even so.
She rang the bell for herself, wildly, raucously. And bled coldly, achingly; and heard Mary’s puzzled laugh, and heard her say, ‘You don’t imagine that’s going to call people in, do you? Those doors won’t open for anyone, whether they try or not.’
No, she didn’t think it was going to call people in. If it did, she didn’t think they could possibly come in time. Those hands were feeling for her again, and never mind the nonsense of the gods: Mary was frowning in concentration, her own fingers stretching and curling as she pictured them around Grace’s throat. The immaterial hands she’d conjured matched her moves exactly, following Grace down, stretching, curling . . .
She wouldn’t burn as Kathie had. These had only the heat of two distant candles behind them, not the concentrated impulse of a bonfire. They looked hot, but their touch was cold, an icy wire against her skin as one brushed across her shoulder. She flinched, and tried to roll underneath their sudden grab. But Mary was quicker now, getting the hang of this unexpected puppetwork, or else Grace was just too slow. Weak and hurt and afraid, not fierce enough, not quite.
One of those hands had a grip on her arm, like a tangle of bitter wire; the other was insinuating itself around her throat. She flung her own hand up to fend it off, tried to tuck her chin deep down into her chest; but there was nothing there to fight against, nothing but the tight wire feel of it around her neck, nothing for her fingers to scrabble at.
She’d seen a rabbit in a snare one time, on an early country walk with one of her squires. She must look like that to Mary, she thought: snared and caught, eyes bulging and legs kicking helpless across the floor . . .
Not so helpless. Grace was no ready easy victim. Her foot caught what she was kicking for, the candle in its jar. Caught it and spilled it and sent it spinning across the bare boards, breaking the thread of flame at its source, unravelling its whole hand so that its grip melted away.
Too bad that it was the wrong hand, the one that had held her by the arm, not the one that was choking her still.
Too bad also that it was only one candle out of dozens. The flame of another immediately rose like a snake on a string, questing towards her, starting to weave itself into another hand.
She could see that in the corner of her eye, just where her vision was starting to blur and sparkle. She couldn’t breathe, she could get no air; all her neck was sore already, and this constriction was worse than the waxy strangling hands of before, like half a dozen wires cutting deep into her flesh.
She couldn’t fight what she couldn’t touch. She couldn’t reach Mary either, safe on her sofa, too far away. But the bell was still humming, resonance throbbing through her head; blood was soaking the bandage on her wrist. She couldn’t do more to summon her baby. He always came to the sound of bells. It was what she was banking on.
It was all she had.
It was nothing.
It was there, he was there: a nothingness so profound he seemed to suck down light itself, a darkness that glowed more vivid than any candle’s flare.
Mary hadn’t seen it yet. She had risen to her feet in the tension of the moment, taken a step or two away from the sofa; her hands worked as though she wanted to squeeze and crush Grace’s throat herself, to feel soft flesh and tough cartilage buckle and yield beneath her rigid fingers.
She wasn’t actually close to actually touching, but she was very close to getting what she wanted else; no more Grace and just her body to dispose of. Grace was dizzy in her head, and her sense of the world was diminishing, black curtains closing in. The pain in her chest was fading, even; air didn’t seem so important any more. Nothing worth fighting for.
Maybe she was giving up at last. Not a survivor after all, not any longer. Sorry, Tony.
She could do that, she thought. She could give up now – if it had only been her. She needn’t hang on for ever, waiting for things to get justifiably worse. If she could never be punished enough, why be punished at all? Why not just be free of it, out of it, gone . . .?
But it wasn’t just her. There was Georgie too, who didn’t deserve any of this; and Mary, who shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it; and Kathie, who was the truly abused innocent; and Frank, who deserved more than smoke and suicide; and . . .
And above all there was her baby, here was her baby, who hadn’t come all this way just to stand witness. Poor baby, never had a chance of life, never had a chance to do anything . . .
He could do something now. He could claim Grace, the way he’d been coming to do, coming and coming: given shape by the house, given purpose by her own conscience. Or he could save her. After all, she still hadn’t been punished enough, and what else could he be interested in?
He could save her, and save Georgie, and justify Frank. Give something back to Kathie, even – even if it wasn’t enough.
Punish Mary. Even if it wasn’t enough.
That had to be how it worked. Didn’t it?
Really, Grace couldn’t decide.
Which was when Georgie took over. Not for long, just a spasm of stubborn refusal to die like this, for someone else’s fault. If Grace didn’t think her own life worth saving, Georgie absolutely did. Stubborn and scared, she could turn the encroaching, engulfing baby. No, not me, not us; her, take her . . .
Mary didn’t know, she couldn’t see. Intent on her target, she never thought to look behind her.
The baby . . . was really not a baby any more. He almost never had been. Not even dead a-borning, he’d never had the chance to grow – but he had grown anyway, hand in hand with his proper time, in his absence. That absence was toddler-sized now, squat and solid. Not really toddler-shaped, no real hint of human: no waving arms or stumping legs, no eyes or dreadful smile. No personality: what chance had he ever had, to be a person? Only the fact of him, the simple hollow absence that he made, indisputable and deadly. Like a whirlpool in the dry, sucking and sucking into nothingness.
If he had a name, Georgie had never heard it; but he must have had a name, he’d had a funeral.
Maybe she should ask Grace – but not now.
Now was only using the moment, the cold and brutal fact of it, using the dead. Grace had called him, and was bleeding herself away to draw him here; she’d done her bit. Georgie could direct him, without guilt. There, the woman who’s killing me. Us. Take her, she’s yours. I give her to you, freely.
No need to ring the bell again, it was only that she wanted to, one passing knell. She wasn’t even sure who it was who passed, as the last of her little vision closed into black: only that she could see Mary toppling into a dark swirling shadow at her back, she could feel the pressure slacken at her throat, but thought it was probably too late; she thought Grace had gone already and she was going now, sliding away, gone . . .